I've tried a variety of times to keep month notes, week notes, logs, all sorts. Failure, all of them.

However.

I still need to solve these anxieties for myself:

• Feeling like time slips by too fast.
• Feeling like I'm not getting anything done.

The system that's finally worked for me is one that's private and low-effort, scrappy and ugly.

At the beginning of the year, I started a fresh daily log book. The rules are:

• No rules!
• Actually, rules: just notes, don't plan, don't think.
• No pressure to write something funny, clever or interesting, because only I'll read it^🟉.
• Write anything for every day, no matter how mundane. I existed, therefore something happened.
• Skipping a day isn't the end of the universe, but go back and fill it in anyway.

The perfect book for this turned out to be the calendar version of my already-favourite notebook form factor that I've been using for years. The Leuchtturm1917 week planner and notebook in B6+.

On the left-hand side are the days of the week. At the end of the day, I write a few words to describe what happened that day (e.g. finished annoying project. went to movies. did laundry.). The right-hand side is just a piece of lined paper, so that's a place I can either leave totally blank or use freeform. I've used the right-hand side to hold badly-thought-out ideas, unbaked to-dos, lists of things bothering me, sketches, contact info, or as a scrapbook of random bits of paper I've collected that week. The cover gets any stickers I am given.

I have filled it in for every day this year, so far, and flicking back through it is satisfying. It is effective in addressing the aforementioned anxieties in an amount that is worth continuing next year.

That's it. That's the post.

^🟉 Do you ever stop and wonder what will happen to all your stuff when you die? Like, will the person clearing out my shelves for recycling bother to stop and read my notebooks? Probably not.

Humble brag, but I have jetlag, and therefore I find myself wide awake at gone 2am. Seems as good a time as any for an update.

Recently:

• We just got back from a trip to Australia, for Web Directions Summit. Alex spoke, mostly about the lost decade and the cost of JavaScript on the web eco-system (the market for lemons). The usual.
• I had screen printed him his very own "Anti JavaScript JavaScript Club" t-shirt, to go with his stickers, and it was a hit with at least some of the attendees.
• Screenprinting is messy and laborious, so rather than do that for everyone else, we set up a drop-shipping thing for them, with the proceeds going to OWA. You can get sticker and t-shirt info at this link.
• After that, we popped over to Adelaide to visit some web folks Alex has been working with but never met. Had a very lovely time, and I got to pet wallabies! They're very soft! Also visited the natural history museum, botanical gardens and contemporary art gallery there. Very nice town, incredibly walkable, chill vibes.
• Spent some time (and a bit of Alex's) adding some new bits and bobs to the Deadpan Studio website, including RSS. I need to fiddle with it a little, but I'm glad to have it in even if it's a bit broken right now.
• I just love RSS. I think it's my favourite protocol. Everything should have an RSS feed.
• The last bit of art work I did was a flurry of activity to produce 5 small paintings to submit to an art show.
• The art show accepted them! Some of them are on display right now. I know I've already sold one.
• My paintings came down from the last show. None of them sold. But, I do now have some prints over at Wave's retail shop, and some of those have done.
• I've been testing out how it feels to say some different things to the question "What do you do?". Sometimes I say I'm semi-retired (sort of true) and do "jobs for good causes and paint a bit", sometimes I try "artist who keeps their oar in by contracting for friends" but a lot of the time I redirect with a self-deprecating joke. I'm struggling.
• Apparently /now pages are back in vogue. Just another place to feel guilty about not updating on the regular, imho. I absolutely would read yours, though, because I don't know how to keep up to date with everyone now the bird site finally died. Personal websites! Get one! Tell me about it!
• Wanna start a web ring?
• Did I mention I ❤️ RSS?

I absolutely gave up on weeknotes last year, but I have sort of missed doing some type of regularly scheduled update, so I'm making it easier on myself by not having to think in small increments - because sometimes nothing happens in a week. So, here's some recent things for mostly August, and I reserve the right to do whatever time frame I fancy in the future.

• I passed my 10 year anniversary in San Francisco - so I should have done a weeknotes especially for that (522 weeks, or something?).
• I really did start counting because I thought it was going to be more like 3 to 5.
• This month I had my first group art show! The Wave Collective Space has been showing my paintings for the last couple weeks and will do into next month.
• If you've been paying attention, you'll realise that technically wasn't my first show, because I did display some paintings with the Jean Henry School of Art when I was on sabbatical after Code for America broke me, but I don't really think of those paintings as art, so much as things I made to learn to oil paint. The things I put in the Wave show were art I made just to make myself happy.
• I say happy, but I continue to be too embarrased to actually speak to anyone about painting in an IRL situation. I went to a gallery show last weekend (and bought an oil painting) and the artist was there and she was this incredibly articulate and thoughtful speaker about her art (and young!) and it just blew my mind. All my role models are youth.

It's the last day of our winter holiday and I was thinking to myself that I ought to have done a Year Notes, like all the cool kids, but I just couldn't be bothered. Much like weeknotes, I've lost the joy of making little updates recently, so I've decided not to push it.

Quick recap, though:

• Omicron arrived, and I count myself forever lucky to have a good, local, group of friends who immediately decided to cut out all the indoor restaurant and bar trips and all the fun stuff, and return to only gathering inside if everyone tested first, within our little social bubble. Consequently, I was able to have Christmas Eve at our house with a couple folks, and Christmas dinner at someone else's and be at a very small NYE gathering.
• Still haven't caught COVID!
• Monica invited me to an event a few weeks back - a popup at a friend of hers' bar where a few local makers were selling their wares, one of whom ended up being me. First time selling art in person! What I learned is: Framed prints sell best, people will be really sweet and nice and I won't know how to react in any way except with a lot of self-deprecation, and selling originals is much more psychologically challenging than anticipated.
• A couple of original paintings at the pop-up went to friends, so I know roughly where they are in the world, but I sold an original watercolour of a crow to a stranger and I actually feel a weird sense of loss about it. Like, it's gone and I'll never see it again? Completely unexpected emotional attachment to a thing I made explicitly for the purpose of selling.
• Finished another semester of Japanese and am putting that down for a little while, but ikebana is still going well (grade 6 now!) and I've got enough paid contract work to keep me off the streets.
• Not much else to note. I think I'm probably done with week notes for a while. I got back into them at the start of 2020 thinking it would be a way to pass the year of corona, but it feels like too much drudgery wrapping up a second year in this state. Maybe I'll switch to monthly notes for a bit. Anyway - I make it 553 weeks of my life living in this place they definitely misnamed the United States of America! Who knew it would be so long.

• Just minutes after hitting publish on last week's notes, my mum emailed me to inform me that my dad had been rushed to hospital with severe pancreatitis. Pretty sure it was our fault for encouraing a week of eating cheese, cake, icecream and red wine. He's home again now on bed rest, minus his gallbladder. Sorry, dad!
• This week I did a little experiment on myself and vlogged a week of doing art. I'm incredibly self-conscious about it, but if you want to go have a laugh at me, it's over here.
• That's about it. The video covers most of the week, but if you can't bear to hear my voice, it goes: finished 3 paintings, started a new semester of Japanese lessons, went to ikebana and did some meetings.